What exactly is Mao Zedong Thought? A renowned Sinologist, Schram, exposes it with one sentence: most of it was copied from Soviet encyclopedias! The true nature of "On Contradiction" is a petition of loyalty to Stalin, a hostile takeover that used the master's currency to buy out the legitimacy of opponents! You only need one book, "Thick Black Theory," to understand it.

The video begins with Stuart Schram's assessment of Mao Zedong's philosophical works, analyzing the relationship between "On Practice" and "On Contradiction" and Soviet philosophical textbooks, Leninism, and Chinese power traditions. It argues that these theories not only served Mao's struggle for power within the Party but also formed a closed system that defined primary contradictions through political tasks and interpreted practice through organizational power. The video also uses historical events such as the Battle of Huangqiao, the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and the Lushan Conference as examples, compares Maoist political maneuvering with Li Zongwu's "Thick Black Theory," and finally distinguishes between Hegelian dialectics and the CCP-style logic of "struggle."

Video link:

Full text:

It takes the low-resolution textbooks of the Soviet Union as its skeleton, the organization of Leninism as its muscles, and the two-thousand-year-old Chinese power-based "Thick Black Theory" as its nerves. It produced a machine with unprecedented spiral efficiency, yet it is completely useless for getting any real work done.

Observe things as they are and reject fragmented cognition. In the last two days, I stumbled upon something very sinister—I can only call it sinister. Someone was livestreaming themselves dissecting the thoughts of that fucking Mao Zedong, word by word. Can you guess what this person was doing by dissecting Mao's thoughts? Fuck, they claimed to be using this line of thinking to trade stocks. Holy shit! After I finished watching, I nearly laughed my guts out. Do they really think this piece of shit has any "thought"? I believe everyone is curious about what Mao's thought actually is, because, after all, no normal person would ever read that crap. However, I still think it is necessary to understand this stuff, because the fucking Emperor You Xi is currently following in his footsteps, clumsily imitating this very set of things. So, I think it is necessary to popularize this, which will also help everyone reach a new level of understanding of the fucking Emperor You Xi. After all, I have a background in philosophy, so I am quite familiar with the history of thought. Now, let's take a look at what Mao's thought actually is.

In fact, the most authoritative researcher on Mao is a foreigner named Stuart Schram. During his lifetime, he visited Shaoshan, Hunan. The group of CCP dogs accompanying him were bragging endlessly about "On Practice" and "On Contradiction," saying how profound they were. Schram interrupted them on the spot, probably tired of hearing them boast. From the perspective of textual research, he gave Mao's thought a very heavy assessment: he said that most of Mao's philosophical works were copied from a Soviet encyclopedia. I think Schram was being polite. In reality, Mao's thought is much worse than just plagiarism. Let me systematically introduce how this thought came to be. In the winter of 1936 and the spring of 1937, Mao focused on devouring the official Soviet philosophy textbook—that "Course in Dialectics" or whatever it was called, edited by Shirokov and Aizenberg. First of all, I must say that Marx never actually proposed any ideas regarding so-called materialist dialectics in his entire life.

Second, even this Soviet trash textbook itself is a patchwork monster. At the time, Shirokov and another person basically took Lenin's "Philosophical Notebooks" (specifically "On the Question of Dialectics"), Engels's "Anti-Dühring", "Dialectics of Nature", and Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach", copied them all down, and passed along this abomination. And whom did Marx copy from? He copied Hegel's "Science of Logic" and "Phenomenology of Spirit". Apart from the "Philosophical Notebooks" read by Lenin, I have read all the rest. The "Science of Logic" itself is a critique of static formal logic, moving from being to essence to concept; it is essentially a supplement to the massive loopholes left by formal logic. For example, from the universal to the particular to the concrete, and then from the concrete to the particular back to the universal—what is the corresponding formal logic? It is singular judgments, particular judgments, and universal judgments. What does it expose? It exposes how dialectical logic pushes formal logic beyond the boundaries determined by formal logic. Things like the unity of opposites and contradictions running through the entire process—all of these are Hegel's original creations.

Then this bunch of Soviet bastards started adding heavy ingredients to it, and what kind of toxic stuff did they add? They added the absoluteness of contradiction and struggle. Everyone needs to understand that the "Science of Logic" mainly critiques traditional epistemology—like Kant and David Hume—while incidentally resolving Descartes's mind-body dualism and subject-object dualism. Besides, you say this bunch of Soviet bastards added struggle into it—what is that if not the philosophers of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union shooting the arrow first and drawing the target later? Because anyone who has read even a little bit of the history of philosophy knows that Hegel's philosophical system was a revival of Spinoza's natural historical view. What is struggle? Who are you struggling with? Are you fucking struggling with God? The stuff Marx copied was precisely this! I am particularly baffled as to how this bunch of Soviet philosophical ignoramuses deduced that struggle is a necessary outcome of inherent contradictions within things. What, does having a contradiction mean you must struggle? What, if my mother scolds me a couple of times, should I report her as a spy or something? Anyway, die-hard fans of the Chinese Communist Party actually do just that; even His Majesty has been confronted like that, hasn't he?

By the time Mao had the chance to plagiarize, this was no longer chewing someone else's food to feed another—it was someone else chewing it, swallowing it, letting it ferment through stomach acid, vomiting it out, repeating the vomiting motion two more times, and after the final spit, Mao just lurked nearby to slurp the juice off that vomit, basically just drinking a bowl of broth. This is the origin of Mao Zedong Thought, pretty much just like that. Moreover, the evidence that Mao was highly reliant on Soviet textbooks is extremely solid. The persona of an original philosopher hyped up by the Chinese Communist Party is also quite something—after it had been vomited out so many times, this fucking idiot could still swallow it down? I am truly impressed, quite something indeed. In fact, people should find it very strange: Mao loved reading books about fixing people his entire life, so why did this fucking idiot suddenly change his tune over those couple of years and start reading philosophy books? Philosophy books are extremely obscure; reading them without a philosophical foundation gives you a severe headache. So what was his motivation for reading them, and what was his motivation for writing "On Contradiction" and "On Practice"? It was still just for power struggles.

One must look at Mao's situation at the time. Back then, the pro-Soviet faction led by Wang Ming would constantly hassle Mao to his face, saying things like there was no Marxism out in the rural backwoods. At the time, Mao still had a label slapped onto his head—what was it? The label of narrow empiricism. Yes, labeling people is the native creative output of the Chinese Communist Party. To return to my point, this theoretical shortcoming was the largest uncovered short position in his intra-party status. Therefore, Mao's "On Contradiction" and "On Practice" served, on the one hand, as a memorial to Stalin showing submission: I am extremely loyal, I believe whatever you say, I study whatever you say—this was a submission memo. What was the other aspect? It was simply a tool for seizing power. I gave it a name that anyone can understand instantly, much like a hostile takeover.

Mao's opponents at the time were the favored sons of the Moscow faction, led by Wang Ming, who held the pricing power over theoretical orthodoxy. Directly cursing the Soviet authorities meant self-delisting from the market. So what was the only viable move? It was to use the stocks issued by Moscow itself to buy out the Moscow faction's company in China, and then use the philosophical language approved by the Communist International to prove that he understood how to implement this stuff in China better than the returned students from the Soviet Union. Mao's efforts did not go to waste; in 1938, Georgi Dimitrov expressed support for Mao's leadership position. This acquisition was officially settled. From then on, this group of people never touched another philosophy book again.

So just savor this operation—isn't this simply using the master's currency to buy out the opponent's legitimacy? That is exactly how the operation went. Therefore, if people really want to learn dregs, the stuff he wrote wasn't even thoroughly dregs. Look at the operations of the person behind this shitty text—aren't they far more dreg-like than the text itself? So it's just dregs; even the stuff he wrote, he couldn't even manage to make it thoroughly dregs. Ten years ago, I read "On Contradiction", and I can honestly say that fucking logical contradictions are everywhere in this writing. When I was reading it back then, I genuinely had only one thought: Has this guy ever actually read a book? Could it be that, just like Emperor You Xi, his true educational background is just primary school level?

Let me give you an example, which comes from that masterpiece, On Contradiction. In mathematics there are positive and negative numbers, in physics there are positive and negative charges, and this fucking guy added class struggle to the mix. These three things have absolutely nothing to do with each other, right? Positive and negative numbers are inverse elements in mathematics, electrical charges are physical properties, and class struggle is pure conflict of interest. The only thing they have in common is that they can all be described in Chinese using opposite terms. This fucking guy lumped a bunch of relationships with the same name but completely different structures together into a universal law of the universe. Logically speaking, isn't this a textbook case of equivocation? To put it bluntly, it is using the density of analogy to impersonate the strength of argumentation. You could say that the brainpower or logical content of all his arguments is fucking zero, and moreover, this set of theories is naturally a self-closed system. Any counterexample can be dismissed by saying that you failed to discover the contradiction, so it can never lose and therefore can never be falsified.

Even more retarded is the concept of the principal contradiction. This fucking idiot said that a complex process must have a principal contradiction, and that the principal contradiction determines the nature of things. Sounds like a methodology, right? But from beginning to end, this text never provides an independent and replicable identification procedure, and its actual operation process is completely backward. How did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) do it? The CCP first sets a political task, then declares that the contradiction matching the task is the principal contradiction, and finally uses the principal contradiction theory to prove the inevitability of the task. With the conclusion coming first and the theory backing it up, it just loops around in circles. What is this? Isn't it just like saying "the final right of interpretation belongs to the manufacturer"? Whoever has the right of interpretation gets to decide when to unite and when to start fighting, and who counts as the people and who counts as the enemy? This fucking thing is not philosophy at all; isn't it just a typical binary switch?

Then there is the fact that this fucking idiot didn't even understand what dialectics is in the first place. Actually, the term dialectics doesn't even come from Hegel; it comes from someone else, which I will talk about later. But this fucking idiot still forced this theory into shape, ruining the reputation of dialectics so that it has now become what? It has become sophistry and dialectical trickery. If I get the chance, I'll chat with you all about what dialectics really is. Hegel's negation of the negation dictates that after opposition, a higher-level unity must be achieved. In the original Yan'an version of On Contradiction, this point was still listed among the basic laws. By the 1950s, after the CCP finalized its official edition, this point was downplayed. What was the reason? Let me explain roughly; it's quite an interesting story.

When Stalin wrote the textbook on Marxist-Leninist dialectics in 1938, he took the initiative to delete this "negation of the negation." The finalized version by Mao followed his lead. Why did this happen? Because in dialectics, what is the direction of the "negation of the negation" within the machine? It is reconciliation, reaching unity, and achieving absolute freedom. So these fellows took it apart and threw it straight away, leaving only the piston of struggle to hammer away forever.

On Practice is the same. Things like opposing dogmatism and emphasizing investigation and research do have some value. But taking practice as the sole criterion for testing truth hides a very classic fallacy called "affirming the consequent." A theory being right might lead to success, but seeing success does not allow you to retroactively prove that the theory was right. It doesn't hold up, because success can also come from the crushing weight of resources, the incompetence of opponents, or even pure luck. Therefore, when the criterion of practice is tied to organizational power, whoever has the most fucking resources, the most power, and the ownership of the right of interpretation gets to manufacture success.

Fucking Hegel—if he knew his dialectics would be played with like this by the Soviet Communist Party, and if I were Hegel, I'd be peeking out the window at these bastards every single day. Why? Because they directly canceled all meaning of dialectics, and even canceled epistemology. This dragged epistemology straight toward what? It slid straight toward the idea that only the victors possess the truth. There is an even more ruthless trick: when the CCP has no ability to criticize other ideologies, that's fine; these fucking fellows know how to chant slogans. Fuck it, they stop criticizing and just start acting like hooligans. The CCP held it in for decades and finally squeezed out one sentence: all ideologies have class imprints, except for Marxism, which is a universal scientific truth. Why is it exempt? No explanation is given at all; they just issued themselves an immunity certificate. This is the entire underlying infrastructure of Mao Zedong Thought. Now that we've tested the theory, let's look at the actual performance. Let's see how Mao practiced this stuff by listing a few specific examples.

In October 1940, the location was Huangqiao in Taizhou, Jiangsu. Chen Yi and Su Yu's 7th Corps went to ambush whom? They ambushed Han Deqin's 15,000 men. Who was Han Deqin? Let's discuss this together. Before this, Chen Yi's telegram to the Central Committee was extremely clear. What did he say? He said that resolving the northern Jiangsu issue meant striking at Han first. This single battle wiped out 11,000 Nationalist soldiers. What year was 1940? It was during the War of Resistance Against Japan. Li Shouwei, commander of the 89th Army, drowned in a river during the retreat. Weng Da, commander of the Independent 6th Brigade, committed suicide after defeat. Here I must also add something: rumors online say these two men were assassinated, but that is not true. One drowned, one committed suicide, which is written very clearly in the military history. We don't need to make things up just to criticize.

Who was Han Deqin? He was an anti-Japanese general who fought in the Battle of Taierzhuang. In the Battle of Huangqiao, he was not fighting the Japanese army, but a friendly force; the nature of this is undeniable, and it was a sneak attack to boot. Is that the end of it? Not yet. A month later at Caodian, the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army had ten regiments launch an offensive against Han Deqin's remnants, but they failed to take the position. Liu Shaoqi admitted as much in a telegram to Yan'an, stating that casualties were around 2,000 and the attrition was significant. Looking further north, in March 1940 in the Taihang Mountains, the Eighth Route Army concentrated 13 regiments to attack the Nationalist army's Huai-stationed troops, fighting until the main force was routed and forced to withdraw from the defense zone. Pushing back even further to late 1939 in Hebei, Zhao Tong, an anti-Japanese guerrilla commander appointed by the Nationalist government, was ambushed by the Eighth Route Army while leading his troops north, and his entire force was wiped out. This was written by Nie Rongzhen himself in his memoirs.

So, what is the core of the CCP's Anti-Japanese National United Front? It is expanding their military, stabbing the Kuomintang in the back, and seizing territory. These three things are backed by a massive amount of literature and cannot be whitewashed no matter how you try. If you put the theory and the actual practice together, a pattern emerges. What is brilliant about this system is not any specific argument, but a structural design that ensures it can never be wrong. Let me take one term as an example: what is the most typical definition of the word "the people"? The definition is that those who support socialism and the Party are the people. And who decides whether you support them or not? The CCP itself. If your criticism does not threaten their power, it is a "contradiction among the people"; if your criticism has an impact, the same words instantly turn you into an "enemy-people contradiction." What is this called logically? It is called circular definition plus moving the goalposts, and it is institutionally unfalsifiable. Let's look at another case: the transition from the Hundred Flowers Campaign to the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, which scholars are still arguing about today.

Did Mao (the salted meat) dig a bunch of pits from the start, waiting for the fucking intellectuals to jump in? Actually, there is no need to argue about the motive, because the structure is already there. In his own speeches, Mao said he wanted to let the bad elements expose themselves, then isolate them, and lure the ants out of their holes. What was the method? First, allow free expression, then reclassify those who spoke up. The result was that 550,000 people were labeled as rightists. You can still argue about the motive, but the structure is indisputable and cannot be whitewashed.

If you go back further to the 1945 "On Coalition Government," what did it say in black and white? It said that during the New Democratic stage, a one-party government should not be implemented, and this stage would last for a considerable amount of time. Yet, within a few years of the CCP entering the cities, all other parties were wiped out by Mao himself, leaving only a few puppet parties. I remember one scene very clearly: there was a foreign reporter, was it British or American? I forgot. Who were they interviewing? They were interviewing the Kuomintang in China. Not the one in Taiwan! The reporter was very confused and asked, "What exactly is the political appeal of your Kuomintang?" This idiot replied—and what did this idiot say? He said, "We firmly support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party." Seriously, my fucking brain just crashed. What the fuck is this? One political party firmly supporting the leadership of another political party? What else is there?

Then there is the phrase "it is right to rebel." What do I think of when he says that? In his speech congratulating Stalin on his birthday, Mao summarized Marxism as exactly this phrase: "it is right to rebel." If you say this person's intelligence didn't have major defects, I certainly don't believe it. Moreover, from beginning to end, he never said who the subject of the rebellion was, who the target was, or where the boundaries were. Before seizing power, this phrase encouraged everyone to shout it; after seizing power, any rebellion not approved by the CCP immediately became counter-revolutionary. The same slogan you used was completely invalidated the day the CCP entered the cities. This is the ideology of Mao (the salted meat). Who are the living specimens today? One is Sima Nan, and the other is that fucking Emperor You Xi; isn't it all rooted in these same things?

Don't even look at Mao's philosophy; it's total bullshit. But the ideological mechanism Mao used to persecute people was very clear: first, use political slogans to compress reality, then moralize disagreements into issues of stance, and finally treat professional rebuttals as political resistance. Under this political ecology, grassroots cadres report fake data layer by layer to protect their positions. Once real information is completely cut off, erroneous policies can never be stopped. The result was tens of millions of Chinese people starving to death. What is happening now? It's the bankruptcy of private enterprises in droves. And look, the tone of these little influencers who can't keep their pants on and come out to show off—isn't it all the same path? What are they saying? They say, "You are unpatriotic, you are a traitor," and they slap a label on you first. Because these people have poor brains, they can only resort to what? Compressing complex reality into a simple political slogan. And where does this political slogan come from? It comes from the morality established by the CCP. So, what exactly is Mao's ideology?

Is there any book that can rival the trashy works of Mao the Bacon (Mao Zedong) or serve as an introductory text to his philosophy? Is there? Well, there actually is: Li Zongwu's "Thick Black Theory" (Houhei Xue). Now, let us bring Li Zongwu onto the stage. In 1912, Li Zongwu from Sichuan wrote "Thick Black Theory." What did he say? He claimed that the secret to success for heroes throughout history boils down to four characters: "thick face and black heart." Let's be clear: Li Zongwu was a satirist, and the title "Master of Thick Black" he gave himself was actually ironic. What was the purpose of his book? It was to strip away the robes of the sages and show everyone the power calculations underneath. He was exposing, not instigating. This distinction is crucial.

So, what is the relationship between Mao the Bacon and "Thick Black Theory"? I would say that although Li Zongwu, the teacher, never met this student, their exam papers are highly identical. In terms of techniques for seizing power and ruling, the similarity reaches about 80 percent. This shows that Li Zongwu was not describing a single book, but the entire operating system embedded in China's power tradition; Mao the Bacon simply ran this system at an unprecedented scale. If you check the notes, you will see. In Li Zongwu's six-character mantra for officials, there is the word "fierce," but he specifically notes that this fierceness must be covered with a layer of benevolence and morality. This is exactly the same as the structure of Maoist political language. Look: cleaning house is called "line struggle," depriving people of their rights is called "people's democratic dictatorship," attacking friendly forces is called "self-defense against stubborn elements," and purging people within the party is called "achieving unity through struggle." See? It is exactly the same.

Li Zongwu also had a famous "sawing the pot" method. What is that? It means a tinker, when the owner isn't looking, knocks the crack wider, then fixes it to collect money and earn gratitude. This trick has an official record in Mao the Bacon's writings. In 1966, Mao wrote a letter to Jiang Qing—I don't know why these two had to write letters when they were living so close, maybe they were too busy fucking other people? Anyway, let's not speculate. What did he write? He said that one must achieve "great order under heaven" through "great chaos under heaven," and that this "great chaos" should be initiated every seven or eight years. What was he seeking? He was actively creating crises and then harvesting authority as the solver of those crises. Later, who carried out this practice? That shorty Deng did. And Mao the Bacon even explicitly stated that this is a recyclable process. Hasn't this "pot-sawing" method risen from a craft to a governance cycle? Look at those idiot brothers now; aren't they doing the same thing?

Li Zongwu also had a "sawing the arrow" method. What is that? It means when someone is hit by an arrow, they go to a surgeon, who just saws off the shaft sticking out and says it's cured, claiming the arrowhead is an internal medicine issue. The Maoist system's structure of responsibility is exactly this "sawing the arrow" method: the "line" is always correct, and when something goes wrong, the part that gets sawed off is always the "shaft"—the execution level. After the Great Famine, a few local cadres were dealt with, but what about the arrowhead? What about the source of the decision? That's an "internal medicine" issue, outside the scope of disposal. Li Zongwu also had something called the "deaf man's secret," which is to let people laugh or curse as they please; Mao the Bacon was even more ruthless—he institutionalized it. At the 1959 Lushan Conference, which was originally intended to oppose "leftist" tendencies, Peng Dehuai wrote a private letter to Mao the Bacon discussing the problems of the Great Leap Forward, mentioning that people were starving to death. As a result, the conference immediately shifted from correcting the "left" to opposing the "right." The entire party received one signal: telling the truth carries political risk. From that day on, practice no longer tested theory; instead, theory began to judge those who spoke the truth.

Even the strategy of the "United Front" matches up. Li Zongwu's "thick black" isn't about being fierce to everyone; it's about assessing power relations and then deciding whether to flatter, intimidate, or be fierce, switching between them. Mao the Bacon's original words were: "Utilize contradictions, win over the majority, oppose the minority, and defeat them one by one." Therefore, in Mao's eyes, no group in this system has a stable identity. Today you are a force to be won over, tomorrow you might be a temporary ally, the day after you might be a wavering centrist, and later you are the enemy.

So, friends in Taiwan, do not believe a single word of the CCP's propaganda. I tell you, the procedure above is a conveyor belt for serving dishes; whoever is on it will inevitably go through this process. Just look at Hong Kong today. Many Little Pinks have an obsession: they believe Mao the Bacon's intentions were good. But this makes me feel even more fucking terrified. Why? Because if the Little Pinks really think that, then Mao's level is even lower than Li Zongwu's. At least Li Zongwu portrayed a clear-headed cynic who knew he was acting. But if we follow the Pinks' logic, did Mao the Bacon sincerely believe in the righteousness of the class? But as the saying goes, don't look at the ads, look at the results. From the perspective of institutional effects, if it's really as the Little Pinks say, then it is a combination of sincere moral fanaticism and hypocritical moral packaging; the trash they produce is the same, and violence has simply become justice that is constantly being renamed.

Even if, as the Little Pinks claim, Mao had some sort of class-conscious heart, this whole thing clearly and objectively possesses a thick-and-black structure. Aren't the things they wanted to seize simply the right to moral judgment and the power to define violence? Besides, the thick-and-black philosophy described by Li Zongwu was a craft for individuals; as for Mao, he institutionalized it, equipped with a party, an army, and a propaganda system, and then this garbage political trickery was replicated in batches across the bureaucratic strata. This is a difference in scale. By the way, there is also a structural joke: who was the prototype of the black heart in the thick-and-black philosophy? It was Cao Cao, the one who said, "I would rather betray the world than let the world betray me." Around 1959, the person who publicly promoted Cao Cao's approach was none other than Mao himself. This might not count as solid evidence, but rather as a footnote written by history itself. Anyway, chew on that.

Finally, I also want to set the record straight: what is true dialectics? The most widely circulated thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad is actually something Hegel himself never argued. It was a popular formula concocted by a German professor named Carl Beyme (or rather, Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus) when summarizing Fichte, which was then mistakenly attributed to Hegel through spread of misinformation. In fact, anyone with a bit of historical knowledge would know that Hegel's core concept is sublation, which is *Aufheben*. Its original meaning in German is to lift upward. This German word simultaneously contains three meanings: cancellation, preservation, and elevation, meaning it exists in a latent state. However, the opposite is not eliminated, but rather absorbed into a new structure at a higher level. In Hegel's philosophy, the concept of contradiction is the internal driving force of self-development, and the direction of contradiction points toward reconciliation and freedom.

This is why Stalin wanted to delete the "negation of the negation," and Mao downgraded the conceptual unity into struggle—meaning unity can never be achieved. Does this asshole think he's hinting at the Taiwan issue? It's just like that fucking idiot *Journey to the West*, spending a lifetime wishing only to sacrifice oneself to achieve Japan. In other words, when everyone hears the same word called dialectics, for Hegel it's a drive toward rational self-understanding, while for the Chinese Communist Party it's a perpetual-motion-machine-like spinning in place, fucking over not only other people but also themselves.

Finally, to highly summarize, what the hell kind of piece of shit is Mao's thought anyway? It took the low-resolution Soviet textbooks as the skeleton, Leninist organization as the muscle, and China's two thousand years of power-driven thick-and-black philosophy as the nerves, thus creating a machine with unprecedented efficiency in seizing power, but utterly useless at getting actual things done. If anyone has spare time in the future and wants to look at Mao's thought—this gallstone brewed from the greatest vomit in human history—if you don't understand it, it means you are a normal human being. If you want to understand it, it's simple: just put a copy of *The Thick-and-Black Theory* next to you as a guide.